






CAMOENS—THE LYRIC 
POET 


Address at Vassar College 
on April 21, 1909 
by 
JOAQUIM NABUCO 


Brazilian Ambassador 


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CAMOENS—THE LYRIC POET 


Last year I spoke of Camoens at Yale University ; 
this year it is my good fortune again to speak of him 
and to do it before the institution in which, as a true 
poet, drawing inspiration more from woman than from 
man, he would prefer, among all others of this country, 
to anchor his fame. Love was the daily bread of his 
genius; as a poet, he fed on love; in his early verses, as 
the singer of his own joys and pains; in his maturity, 
as the mirror of its power on nature and mankind. 
I will attempt tonight to give you an idea of the part 
that the worship of woman plays in his work. But, 
before, I had better say a word on the part it played in 
his own life, and for this I will draw a short raccourci 
of that life. 

Much has been written on it that seems to me an 
attempt at vivisection. It is cruel to snatch the inner- 
most secrets of a man from the privacy, nay, from the 
oblivion, to which he wished his most clement Madonna 
would relegate them, and to uncover his life before 
masked posterity, simply because he created a master- 
piece. 

The principal events in the life of Camoens may be 
resumed thus. He was born in 1524, and received a 
strong classical education at Coimbra under his uncle, 
the chancellor of the University, Frei Bento de Camoens. 
After 1542 he settled in Lisbon, courting the beauties 
of the Palace and writing to them no end of verses, until 
he fell in true love with one of them, a young Lady to 


2 


the Queen. This love caused his relegation from the 
capital and his enlistment for Africa, where he was 
wounded and lost one of his eyes, an event which dis- 
abled him for general courtship. Returning to Lisbon, 
he wounded a man in a street fight, was incarcerated, 
and could only free himself by engaging for military 
service in India. In 1553 he leaves for the East, where 
he will spend sixteen years, from his 29th to his 45th 
year. This isthe period of the Lustaps. In 1569 he 
returned to Lisbon, after constant misfortune. In 
1572 the Lustaps was published. In 1580 Portugal dies 
as a nation, thanks to him for sixty years only, and he 
dies with her. This is the frame of his life. The first 
half of it belongs to the Lyric, the second to the Hpiec 
poet, although the Lyric was never as great in his 
youth as under the first shadows of decline. 

Much remains doubtful in that life. T’'wo men in the 
present time, one of them now deceased, have done 
much to reconstruct it, Dr. Theophilo Braga and the 
German, Dr. Wilhelm Storck. Their names will be 
forever associated with his as those of the Morgado de 
Matteus in the first quarter and of Viscount de Juro- 
menha after the middle of the last century. They have 
done considerable work, but one wonders if the doubt- 
ful points will ever be settled. At the end of the nine- 
teenth century, Dr. Storck, for instance, started the idea 
that the ever-acknowledged mother of Camoens, Dona 
Anna de Sa, was only his stepmother, his true mother 
having died while giving birth to him. Philip the Sec- 
ond of Spain granted a pension to Dona Anna de Sa 
in the belief that she was the mother of the poet, but 
Dr. Storck believes more in his own interpretation of 
a verse of Camoens than in the Royal decree of the 
Spanish King. Both books, that of Theophilo Braga 


S 


and that of Dr. Storck, swarm with new conceptions of 
the events in the poet’s life, nearly all based on their 
reading of his poems, dated and located by them anew. 
There is much ingeniousness in their restorations, but 
I feel sure the poet would wonder at many of the epi- 
sodes and intentions sworn by them. I must say I 
speak with the highest respect for their knowledge and 
their work and under a very great debt, but I cannot 
help thinking that both feel too sure of their divining 
oift. 

I am afraid that with the advance of years there is a 
tendency to concentrate admiration and to let one man 
represent the literature of an epoch or of a people. 
Something of the kind is happening to me with regard 
to Camoens; but I have not yet reached the period of 
fetichism, as Storck, Theophilo Braga, Richard Bur- 
ton, and others did. Every truly great work must con- 
tain much rock by the side of the gold. I find dreary, 
long passages in Dante, Milton, or Camoens. I am 
certainly wrong, and they right, as the author reads 
what he composes at the light of his inspiration; his 
writing is only the shadow of what rushes on him, 
either through his brain or through his heart, and 
which he tried to reduce to words. Other people read 
without any interior light to illuminate them as to the 
source of the thought; they receive only the ashes of 
the poet’s inspiration, the echo of his mner song, and 
they interpret him, each in his own way. 

There is a doubtful point in the history of Camoens 
of the most intense interest. ‘The dispute between his 
claimant birth-cities move only their own citizens; the 
dispute about the woman whose love inspired him 
appeals to a much wider class, that of lovers, and not 
only to lovers alone, to all who give them a smile. Tra- 


4 | 
dition has fixed her name as Catherina de Athayde, and 
her rank or employment as that of Lady to the Queen, — 
Dona Catherina. Unfortunately, there was, it seems, 
more than one Dona Catherina de Athayde in the Royal 
Palace of Lisbon, at least two: the daughter of 
Dom Alvaro de Souza, and the daughter of Dom An- 
tonio de Lima. The chief biographers, including 
Braga and Storck, agree that the poet’s enchantress 
was the latter; the claim of the first, however, has 
revived since the publication of a passage in the papers 
of her confessor. The story with the daughter of Dom 
‘Antonio de Lima would be this: Camoens saw her in 
her adolescence, was relegated from Court for aspiring 
to her, and remained faithful to that love through all 
his persecutions and her neglect until her death. She 
never married and died young in Court. The story 
with the daughter of Dom Alvaro de Souza would be 
this: Camoens loved her before her marriage, which 
upset all his life and made him strong enemies in Court. 
Persecution caused his exile and his enlistment for 
Africa. When he returns to Lisbon it is to hear of her 
marriage. Hence his fight with one of her husband’s 
relatives and his departure for India, having nothing 
else to attach him to his country. There seems to exist 
more reality in the second story: it accounts better for 
the tone of his love sonnets, and it alone accounts for 
those in which he complains of having been sacrificed 
to an unworthy rival; it accounts for the aggression he’ 
made on a relative of hers in the King’s service; it ac- 
counts better for his distress, for the life he led, and for 
his departure. 

One cannot help seeing a strange coincidence in the 
assault committed by Camoens on Gongalo Borges, 
half-brother of Ruy Borges, the husband of Dom 


{ 
} 


|? 
_ Alvaro de Souza’s daughter. And what to say of her 


~~ : ‘ ; nn . . , . in 


5 


words to her confessor, Frei Joao do Rosario, from the 
Dominican Convent of Aveiro, a house to which she 
was most attached and where she is believed to rest? 
This is the note about her found in her confessor’s 
papers: ‘‘And every time I spoke to her of the poet, 
exiled because of her, I had always the answer that it 
was not so and that it was his great soul that had com- 
mitted him to great enterprises in remote countries.’’ 
As she died in 1551, the reference here is to the ab- 
sence of Camoens in Africa. Perhaps she knew not 
where he had gone. The questioning by her confessor 
shows that the attachment of Camoens was well known 
around her, while her answer, although that of a 
faithful wife, who wished to stop all murmurs, shows 
she could not hide her admiration for the poet, who had 
loved her in her maidenhood and loved her still without 
hope. 

The problem is not easy to solve, as the most beau- 
tiful love verses of Camoens were written in India and 
speak of a long sentiment, still in its constancy, al- 
though subdued by resignation and through the death 
of all earthly hope, and there is no doubt, if dates on 
tombstones are not altered, that the daughter of Dom 
Alvaro died before his departure for the East. Is it 
possible that he had not heard of her death? One 
thing, however, appears most probable from the verses 
of Camoens: that the young person he so ardently 
loved married another man, and that he remained faith- 
ful to her. 

The love of Dante for Beatrice did not die with her 
marriage; the effect of the marriage on her poet was 
only to render that love immortal by making her unat- 
tainable to him. There is much resemblance between 


6 


the love verses of Camoens and those of Dante and 
Petrarca indicating a similar story. The intensity of 
despair which he puts in his verses speaks of an ob- 
stacle more hopeless than the opposition of others to 
the two lovers’s will. The love that he received and 
which he pours forth in his Lustaps did not come from 
the look of a young girl, soon after, and forever, an 
absent and silent image in his mind. It speaks of the 
full reciprocation of two hearts beating in unison. 
Wordsworth, asking a critic not to scorn the sonnet, 
reminded him of Shakespeare and of Camoens, 


Camoens soothed with it an exile’s grief, 


and when Elizabeth Browning wanted a title for her 
love sonnets, that would veil for a moment her author- 
ship, Browning could not find a better one than this— 
Sonnets from the Portuguese. These two reminiscences 
are sufficient to show the deep impression caused among 
the poets of England in past generations by Camoens’s 
sonnets. Some of them appeared in the little book of 
Lord Strangford, Poems from the Portuguese of Lus 
de Camoens, printed in 1803, and many more in the 
Memoirs of the Infe and Writings of Luis de Camoens 
of John Adamson, published in 1820. ‘The admiration 
of Robert Southey, expressed by his own translations, 
contributed much to place the love poems of Camoens 
alongside those of Dante and Petrarca. In Camoens, 
as in Dante, the epic eclypses entirely the lyric, still the 
lyric is of first magnitude. The reason is that the epic, 
or collective, light is more powerful of its nature 
than the lyric, or personal, one. It is a very con- 
siderable work, the lyric work of Camoens. Some pre- 
tend that even without the Lustaps it would be enough 





‘hie 


to assure him his rank among the greatest poets. I be- 
heve that without the Lustaps his name, owing to the 
narrower circle of Portuguese, would not compete with 
Petrarea, and I am afraid that he would not even be 
recognized in Portugal and Brazil as infinitely above 
all other native poets. I do not speak for myself. I 
place him in a solitary sphere in the literature of the 
two sister languages, Portuguese and Spanish. But 
when I come to Dante and Petrarca, I must say it 
seems to me that they closed the cycle of the love son- 
nets, and that all done after them is either implied or 
m germ in their work. In fact, Dante’s sonnet 


Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare 
La donna mia, quand’ ella altrui saluta 


stands above all love sonnets as the bourn not to be 
twice attained, and which recedes with each new gen- 
eration of poets that passes. I thought I had better re- 
mind you of it, hoping it will be a lifelong friend of 
yours, as it has been of mine.* 


*Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare 

La donna mia, quand’ella altrui saluta, 
Che ogni lingua divien, tremando, muta, 
E gli occhi non ardiscon di guardare. 


Ella sen va, sentendosi laudare, 
Benignamente d’umilta vestuta; 
E par che sia una cosa venuta 
Di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare. 


Mostrasi si piacente a chi la mira, 
Che da per gli occhi una dolcezza al core, 
Che intender non la puo chi non la prova. 


E par che della sua labbia si muova 
Uno spirito soave e pien d’amore 
Che va dicendo all’anima: sospira! 


8 


Still it is a splendid crop that of the seeds sown by the 
Italian love poets of the early Renaissance, and no- 
where they produced flowers so much like the primitive 
ones as in the verses of Camoens. I cannot associate 
_ Shakespeare to them, as Shakespeare is a world apart, 
entirely a new projection on the whole domain of 
Poetry, but Dante, Petrarca and Camoens come from 
the same divine pattern; the poetical soul of the first 
resounded to the end in the second, and their combined 
spirit passed on to the third and spent itself among 
men. Camoens as a lyric is the echo of Dante and 
Petrarca: the. echo not of their songs, but of their 
singing. The three make a chain unique in Poetry. 
They were detached from the same chorus, which they 
will have joined again. 

Here is one of his sonnets, describing the first im- 
pression he had of no longer being free. It was in 
church, like Petrarca, and on a Holy Friday. I will 
translate it into English prose. Translations in verse 
do not associate only two different literatures, as it is 
inevitable in any translation; they generally associate 
also two very unequal poets: 


“The religious rites were being celebrated in the temple where 
every being glorified the divine Maker, who on that day had restored 
his work with his own sacred blood. Love, who watched the 
occasion, when I felt my will should be safest, stormed my mind 
and sight with the rarest angelic figure. Believing that the place 
defended me from his wonted ways, and not knowing that none was 
too confident to escape him, I let myself be made captive. But today, 
realizing that he wished me for your slave, I repent of the time I 
was free.” 


O culto divinal se celebrava 

No templo donde toda creatura 
Louva o Feitor divino, que a feitura 
Com seu sagrado Sangue restaurava. 


Amor alli, que 0 tempo me aguardava, 
Onde a vontade tinha mais segura, 
Com uma rara e angelica figura, 
A vista da razao me salteava. 


Eu, crendo que o lugar me defendia 
De seu livre costume, nao sabendo 
Que nenhum confiado lhe fugia; 


Deixei me captivar; mas hoje vendo, 
Senhora, que por vosso me queria, 
Do tempo que fui livre me arrependo. 


This idea that love conceals itself in the eyes of one 
who attracts us, to fall by surprise on its prey, comes 
again and again in different forms: 


“The fond and sweet bird is arranging its plumage with its 
little bill and in the leavy branch it pours forth without restraint 
its joyful and amorous verses, while the cruel fowler, avoiding in 
silence and on tiptoe its sight, directs his arrow with a sure eye 
against its heart giving it on the Stygian lake an eternal nest. 
In this way my heart, that was moving about in freedom, although 
long destined to this fate, was wounded where it least expected, 
as the blind archer waited to take me unaware, concealed in your 
clear eyes.” 


Esta o lascivo e doce passarinho 

Com o biquinho as pennas ordenando; 
O verso sem medida, alegre, e brando, 
Despedindo no rustico raminho. 


O cruel cacador, que do caminho 

Se vem callado, e manso desviando, 

Com prompta vista a setta endireitando, 
Lhe da no Estygio Lago eterno ninho. 


Desta are o coracao, que livre andava, 
(Posto que ja de longe destinado) 
Onde menos temia, foi ferido. 


Id 


Porque o frecheiro cego me esperava 
Para que me tomasse descuidado, 
Em vossos claros olhos escondido. 


This is the usual tone of his sonnets: praises and com- 
plaints, caresses and fears: 


“Spring is concentrating its colours in your image, on your cheeks, 
on your lips, it spreads on your brow roses, lilies and carnations. 
In colouring your features, Nature shows all its art. Hill and 
valley, river and forest are jealous of such tints. But if you do not 
allow him who loves you to cull the fruit of those flowers, your eyes 
will lose all their charm. As it is no use, fair Dame, for Love to 
sow loves in you, if your condition only produces thorns.” 


Esta-se a Primavera trasladando 
Em vossa vista deleitosa e honesta; 
Nas bellas faces, e na boca, e testa, 
Cecens, rosas e cravos debuxando. 


De sorte, vosso gesto matizando, 

Natura quanto pdéde manifesta; 

Que o monte, o campo, o rio, e a floresta 
Se estao de vés, Senhora, namorando. 


Se agora nao quereis que quem vos ama 
Possa colher o fructo destas flores, 
Perderao toda a graca os vossos olhos. 


Porque pouco aproveita, linda Dama, 

Que semeasse 0 amor em vos amores, 

Se vossa condicao produze abrolhos. 
—XXVIII. 


Compare with this one: 


Give back this whiteness to the lily and this crimson colour to the 
pure roses. Give back to the sun the luminous flames of those 
eyes that condemn thee to constant robbery. Give back the de- 
lightful cadence of this voice to the sweet siren, and this grace 
to the Graces, who complain of having theirs less serene on thy 
account. Give back beauty to beautiful Venus, wisdom, genius, 


tte A 


II 


art to Minerva, and purity to chaste Diana. Divest thyself of 
this greatness, all made of gifts, and thou shalt remain with thy- 
self alone: that is with inhumanity. 


Tornai essa brancura 4 alva assucena, 
E essa purpurea cér 4s puras rosas: 
Tornai ao Sol as chammas luminosas 
De essa vista que a roubos vos condena. 


Tornai 4 suavissima sirena 

De essa voz as cadencias deleitosas; 
Tornai a graca 4s Gracas, que queixosas 
Estao de a ter por vOS menos serena. 


Tornai 4 bella Venus a belleza; 
A Minerva o saber, o engenho, e a arte; 
E a pureza 4 castissima Diana. 


Despojai-vos de toda essa grandeza 

De does; e ficareis em toda parte 

Comovosco s6, que he s6 ser inhumana. 
—OCXX. 


He studies the nature of love in his own heart, the 
maze of its contrasts: 


Love is a fire that burns without being seen; a wound that aches, 
without our minding it; it is a discontented contentment; a pain 
that makes one rave without feeling the pain. It is to care for 
nothing but always to care; to live solitary among people; not to 
feel happy in bliss; to think one wins when one is losing. 

It is to remain in prison for pleasure; to serve her who wins her 
winner; to be loyal to one who kills us. But how can its favour 
produce so much conformity in human hearts, being love so con- 
trary to itself? 


Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver; 
E’ ferida que doe, e nao se sente; 

—’ hum contentamento descontente; 
kK’ dor que desatina sem doer. 


I2 


E’ um nado guerer mais que bem querer, 
—’ solitario andar por entre a gente; 
E’ um nao contentar-se de contente; 

BY’ cuidar que se ganha em se perder. 


E’ um estar-se preso por vontade; 
E’ servir a quem vence o vencedor; 
EX’ um ter com quem nos mata lealdade. 


Mas como causar pdde o seu favor 
Nos mortaes coracoes conformidade, 
Sendo a si tao contrario 0 mesmo amor? 


Here is another that belongs to the metaphysics of 
love, the essence of Platonism. It is composed on the 
Petrarchian motif : 


L’amante nel amato si trasforme 


in the Triumph of Love. 


: “The lover, by virtue of so much thinking of it, transforms him- 
self in the loved thing. I have nothing else to desire, as the desired 
object is within myself. If my soul is transformed in it, what else 
could the body obtain? It may rest with itself alone, as the other 
soul is already tied to it. But this lovely and pure half-Goddess, who, 
so perfectly as the accident to its subject, conforms herself to my 
soul, is in my thought as the idea, and the live and pure love of 
which I am made, as simple matter, seeks its form.” 


Transforma-se 0 amador na cousa amada, 
Por virtude do muito imaginar: 

Nao tenho logo mais que desejar, 

Pois em mim tenho a parte desejada. 


Se nella esta minha alma transformada, 
Que mais deseja o corpo de aleancar? 
Em si sOmente pode descansar, 

Pois com elle tal alma esta liada. 


13 


Mas esta linda e pura semidéa, 
Que como o accidente em seu sujeito, 
Assi com a alma minha se conf6rma, 


Esta no pensamento como idéa; 

E o vivo e puro amor de que sou feito, 

Como a materia simples busca a forma. 
omen a 


He looks as a swan who would sing his last song 
every day: 


“The swan, when he feels that his last hour is coming, spreads 
with a doleful voice a greater harmony along the desert shores. 
He wishes to enjoy a lengthier day and weeps its early flight. 
Under the keen grief of departure, he celebrates the sad end of the 
journey. So, my lady, when I saw the sad end reserved for my 
devotion, finding myself without a thread of hope, I sang with 
sweeter accent your disfavors, your false faith and my own love.” 


O cysne, quando sente ser chegada 
A hora que poe termo 4 sua vida, 
Harmonia maior, com voz sentida, 
Levanta por a praia inhabitada. 


Deseja lograr vida prolongada, 

E della esté chorando a despedida: 
Com grande saudade da partida, 
Celebra o triste fim desta jornada. 


Assi, Senhora minha, quando eu via 
O triste fim que davam meus amores, 
Estando'posto ja no extremo fio; 


Com mais suave accento de harmonia 

Descantei por os vossos desfavores 

La vuestra falsa fé, y el amor mio. 
—xXLIII. 


Here is one that shows well how he imbibes in nature 
all day long the poetry which he turns into love ¢a- 
dences: 


14 


The loveliness of these cool mountains, the shade of the verdant 
chestnuts, the still flowing of the rivulets, from which all sadness is 
banished afar; the hoarse sotind of the sea, the strange land, the 
setting of the sun behind the hills, the gathering of the late flocks, 
the soft war of the clouds in the skies; in fine, all that incomparable 
Nature offers with such variety, makes me only suffer, if I do not 
see thee. Without thee all tires and displeases me; without thee I 
am ever tasting, in the greatest joys, the greatest loneliness. 


A formosura desta fresca serra, 

E a sombra dos verdes castanheiros; 
O manso caminhar destes ribeiros, 
Donde toda a tristeza se desterra: 


O rouco som do mar, a estranha terra, 
O esconder do Sol pelos outeiros, 

O recolher dos gados derradeiros, 
Das nuvens pelo ar a branda guerra: 


Em fim, tudo o que a rara natureza 
Com tanta variedade nos offrece, 
Me esta, se nao te vejo, magoando. 


Sem ti tudo me enoja, e me aborrece; 

Sem ti perpetuamente estou passando 

Nas mores alegrias, mor tristeza. 
—CCLXXI. 


We come to one of the most beautiful of his sonnets, 
the one telling of his separation from his beloved one, 
whether forever or for days, no one knows. It is the 
Sonnet 24 of his Rhythmas. This sonnet is located by 

Braga on the morning of Camoens’s exile from Lisbon, 
and by Storck on the morning of his departure for 
India; but are great events really necessary to make 
two dividing lovers shed streams of tears? Does not 
the shortest separation often appear tragic enough to 
them, without any need of exile and persecution? This 
is a point which lovers can judge better than critics. On 


r5 
the face of it, it was a separation of which it can be said 
that all was lost, but love. 


“That early morning, so sad, yet so joyful, all full of sorrow and 
of pity, as long as loving remembrance will exist on earth, I wish 
it to be forever celebrated. It alone, when coming out fresh and 
dappled to light the earth, saw the tearing away of two lovers, 
whose wills shall never be divided. It alone saw running from 
their eyes threads of tears, which joined into a large stream. fit 
alone heard the doleful words, which could render the fire cold and 
give rest to the damned souls.” 


Aquella triste e léda madrugada, 
Cheia toda de magoa e de piedade, 

Em quanto houver no mundo saudade, 
Quero que seja sempre celebrada. 


Ella s6, quando amena e marchetada 
Sahia, dando 4 terra claridade, 

Vio apartar-se de uma outra vontade, 
Que nunca podera ver-se apartada. 


Ella so vio as lagrimas em fio, 
Que de uns e de outros olhos derivadas, 
Juntando-se, formaram largo rio. 


Ella ouvio as palavras magoadas, 
Que puderam tornar o fogo frio, 
E dar descanso 4s almas condemnadas. 


Here you see his force, his earnestness, his power of 
moving the heart, so great that one can hardly realize 
that so much emotion can hold within so few lines. 

Here is another in the same strain, although with a 
touch of resignation, which, strange to say, comes from 
the loss of all hope: 


4 

“What more can I expect from the World, if having given it so 
much love, I only got back discontent and disfavor, and finally death, 
than which nothing could be more cruel. Since life does not 
satiate me of living, and since I find that a great grief does not 


16 


kill, if there is anything that gives a stronger pain, I am ready to 
try it, as I can endure all. Death to my great grief has insured me 
against all possible calamities..I have lost her whom fear taught 
me to lose. In life I received only unlove; in death, the great sorrow 
that remains to me. It seems that only for this I was born.” 


Que poderei do Mundo ja querer, 

Pois no mesmo em que puz tamanho amor, 
Nao vi senao desgosto e desfavor, 

E morte, em fim, que mais nao pdde ser? 


Pois me nao farta a vida de viver, 
Pois ja sei que nao mata grande dor, 
Se houver cousa que magoa dé maior, 
Eu a verei, que tudo posso ver. 


A morte, a meu pezar, me assegurou 
De quanto mal me vinha: ja perdi 
O que a perder 0 medo me ensinou. 


Na vida desamor sémente vi; 
Na morte a grande dor me ficou. 
Parece que para isto so nasci. 


I will read a last one, his celebrated sonnet 


Alma minha gentil que te partiste, 


considered the most beautiful of all. The story, as I 
said, with the daughter of Dom Antonio de Lima makes 
Camoens leave Portugal in her lifetime, and write his 
sonnet on her death years afterwards in India. Braga 
pretends that he wrote it as late as in 1561. If this 
sonnet had been written in India on the delayed news 
of the death of one seen for the last time years before, 
as Braga believes, the verses would have more the char- 
acter of a reminiscence than that of burning love, and 
they would probably contain some mark of the poet’s 
sad wanderings and of the great work he was then ab- 
sorbed in. 


17 


This sonnet has been often translated into English 
verse. The two first verses are nearly the same as 
the first in Petrarea’s sonnet 


Quest’anima gentil che si departe, 
Anzi tempo chiamata al altra vita; 


but, if the start is the same, the flight is wholly differ- 
ent: 


“My own gentle soul, who so early hast departed disconsolate from 
this life, may you enjoy forever the rest of heaven and I live here 
on earth with my sorrow. If in the ethereal seat, to which thou didst 
ascend, memories of this life are allowed, do not forget that ardent 
love which thou hast seen so pure in my look. And if the grief, 
that remains with me from the pain without remedy of losing 
thee, deserves any reward, beseech God, who has shortened thy 
years, to take me from here to see thee as quickly as from my 
eyes He took thee.’ 


Alma minha gentil, que te partiste 
Tao cedo desta vida descontente, 
Repousa 14 no Ceo eternamente, 

E viva eu ca na terra sempre triste. 


Se 14 no assento Ethereo, onde subiste, 
Memoria desta vida se consente, 

Nao te esquecas de aquelle amor ardente, 
Que ja nos olhos meus tao puro viste. 


E se vires que pode merecer-te 
Alguma cousa a dor, que me ficou 
Da magoa sem remedio de perder-te; 


Roga a Deus, que teus annos encurtou, 
Que tao cedo de ca me leve a ver-te, 
Quao cedo de meus olhos te levou. 


The melody of this short poem could not be exceeded 
in our language: in it the predominant sentiment of 
the race, the saudade, finds its perfect expression. 


18 


I should not leave Vassar College without trying to 
plant here the word saudade. In the poems I have 
read to you I met it many times, but how to translate a 
sentiment that is not expressed in any other language 
by a single word? That word of ours we claim to be 
the most beautiful word of any language; we consider 
it the gem of human speech. It expresses the sad mem- 
ories of life, but also its abiding hopes. The tombs 
bear that inscription, saudade; the lovers’ message to 
each other is saudade; saudade, the message of the ab- 
sent to his country and to his friends. Saudade, you see, 
is the ivy of the heart, attached to its ruins and growing 
in its solitude. To render its meaning, you would have 
to take four English words: remembrance, love, grief 
and longing. Without any one of them you could not 
wholly express the feeling. Still sawdade is simply a 
new form, polished by tears, of the word soledade, soli- 
tude, just as our word adeus, adieu, is the survival of 
the two words, once said as farewell: A Deus, A Dieu, 
to God. ‘‘I commend thee to God.’’ Solitude creates 
loneliness; saudade is the feeling of loneliness, after 
the loss of what kept company to one’s heart: either 
the country, the home, the friends, any whom we love 
or loved, be that separation a passing one, or be it 
death. Hence the infinite scale of the word to express 
all states of mind characterized by the void of the loved 
thing in one’s soul. It is most singular that only 
one human race has distilled from the word solitude 
its impression over the heart; that only one possesses 
a word for regret at loss or absence, mingled with the 
wish to see again, and that only one has that sentiment 
constantly on its lips. The word longing must have 
been an attempt at a comprehensive word for the same 
feeling, taken not from the word loneliness, but from 


19 


the word longe, being apart, far away, but it did not 
obtain the same triumph in English as saudade in 
Portuguese, perhaps because of your race not being a 
nostalgic one. Longing, indeed, is not the popular 
coin of your language, while saudade is the soul, the es- 
sence, of Portuguese, and gives to it the perfume of 
a field of violets. That word is enough by itself to 
show the solitary nature of the race, its homesickness, 
its attachments to its early impressions, its innate sad- 
ness, the sadness of those who never care for anything 
future that has no roots in the past. 

Of the light, fancy verses of Camoens, the Letter to 
a Lady gives a sufficient idea. It is a pure badinage, 
but it shows how his imagination was as active in the 
sports of his heart as in its pangs: 


“Near the clear source of the Ganges the dwellers live on tha 
perfume of the flowers that grow on the hill. As the senses alone 
can give food to life, it is no wonder, if those live by smelling, that 
I live by seeing you. 


“There is a tree which gets so sad among the general content- 
ment, that, when it is night, it blossoms and at daylight it loses its 
leaves. Myself, who feel all the price of looking at you, I get sad 
at your sight, as I know I do not deserve the glory of being sad. 


“A King of great power trained himself with poison, so that he 
would not suffer, if, as was the custom, it was ever given to him oy 
others. With me, who since a child accustomed my sight to all 
that is suffering, it happens that pain only hurts me, when absent. 


“There is a disease of which one gets cured by a secret of nature 
on the simple sight of a bird. From the illness which love fosters 
within me, I would be cured by seeing that Phcenix, were it not for 
the dropsy that remains of wishing more the more I get. 


“Love, in order to keep its power, made a reluctant will enamoured 
of a statue and then converted the statue into a woman. Whom 


20 


could I complain of, or accuse of deceiving me, if I follow and seek an 
image, which from human is turning herself into marble? 


“Tf any one swears false on the waters of a certain source, he 
at once gets blind. You, tyrant of my freedom, you order, when 
I speak the truth, that I see you no more. 


“The palm is so hard and so strong that weight does not break 
it; on the contrary, in its conceit, it rises still more when bended. 
The harm you do me does not bend only my constancy, it bends also 
my desire; yet, at once, I love you still more. 


“If any one puts out the eyes of the swallow, the mother im- 
mediately goes for an herb that makes others grow. I have my 
eyes fixed on yours, which are stars: those of the understanding 
got blind, but came those of reason, so that I could enjoy my 
torment. 


“While sailing towards the East we discovered a river and 
wondered that the wood that fell in it was changed into stone. 
Yet, it is greater wonder that a heart be converted into diamond 
in a flow of tears. 


“A dumb fish can impress on the line and on the rod such a 
deadly shock that the arm of the angler will be paralized. If my 
eyes begin to drink of this rapturous poison they will not be able 
to move at anything else that appears. 


“How many contradictions love causes to double our torments! 
The same lovely sight, that makes me content, condemns me to sad- 
ness, as the flame, that goes out with the wind, with the same wind 
is kindled again.” 


Like the Italian poets, Camoens wrote also Cangées, 
Canzones. In these he was not limited to a small num- 
ber of verses, and could let free his inspiration. They 
are long talks with himself about his loves, his hopes, 
and his desires, and nowhere the thrilling and melo- 
dious kind of soul he possessed appears in such a light: 

One of the most beautiful is the Cancio X, written 
in the East, on the Arabian coast. I will read it in 


21 


part. Braga calls it ‘‘the deepest expression of hu- 
man grief.’’ I would not say that, after the Psalms 
and the Book of Job, and the Divine Comedy; I do not 
compare love sufferings with the real tragedies of the 
soul; but I agree that the kind of grief there is in dis- 
appointed love was never expressed in a more har- 
monious and touching strain. 


> 


“Here I had no place where to lie, not a single hope on which a 
moment to rest my head; all was for me pain, cause for suffering, 
yet not for dying, as I had to undergo my whole fate, never once 
appeased. These furious seas, I tame them with my sighs. These 
winds, they seem to refrain, importuned by my voice. Only the 
severe Heaven, and the stars, and the ever cruel fate find pleasure 
in my eternal suffering, and in showing themse)ves indignant against 
a piece of clay, a vile worm of the earth. 

If after so many labours I got at least to know for certain that 
some hour I was remembered by the clear eyes which I once saw; 
if this sad voice, breaking the distance could touch the angelic ears 
- of the one on whose sight I once lived, and if she turned a little 
on herself, revolving in her anxious mind the times gone by of 
my sweet faults, of the dear pains and wraths, suffered and 
sought for her, and were she, however late, to become compassionate 
and to weigh in her heart my woe, and within herself to think she 


had been cruel to me. ... If I knew only that, it would be rest 
for the life remaining to me and how would I caress my suffer- 
ing! ... Ah! Senhora! Senhora!” 


“How rich you are, that here, so far away, you feed me with 
joy only by such a sweet fiction! As soon as the thought portrays 
you, all pain and all grief disappears. With your remembrance 
only I feel safe and strong against death’s fiercest countenance 
and at once hopes flock to me, thanks to which the brow, rendered 
more serene, converts the hardest torments into gentle and suave 
longings. 

Here I remain with my memories inquiring about you, from the am- 
orous winds that blow from the parts where you dwell; asking the 
birds, which there take their flight, if they saw you, what were you 
doing and talking, where, how, with whom, what day and what 
hour. And the tired life recovers new spirits, with which to win 
fortune and toil, only to return to see you, to serve and to love you 


22 


again. But the ardent desire, that never suffered delay, rashly 
reopens the wounds of my suffering. 

And thus I live. . . .If any one asked thee, my Canzone, why 
I do not die, answer that because death is my. life.” 


Now we come to the eleventh Cancao, certainly his 
highest title as a love poet. You will first take into ac- 
count the great difference between a Portuguese poem 
and an English translation, and this one by a foreigner, 
who learned your language at random, and then judge 
by yourselves if it deserves or not the praise bestowed 
upon it by his admirers. Dr. Wilhelm Storck, his Ger- 
man coryphoeus, calls this Canzone ‘‘the queen of all 
Canzones of all poets preceding or following Camoens 
or his contemporaries.’’ Richard Burton, his English 
coryphoeus, agrees with the Morgado de Matteus, one 
of the Portuguese worshippers of Camoens, in ranking 
the Cancao 


Vinde ca, meu tao certo Secretario, 


with two others of his, higher than the finest Canzones 
of Petrarea. I do not lke ranking masterpieces. All 
classification of them is only a personal caprice of the 
eritic. T'o be able to weigh comparatively the inspira- 
tion of the most beautiful Canzones of Petrarca and 
Camoens would require a poet superior to either, 
possessing not only the gifts of both, but the 
spirit of their two Ages and languages. A critic may 
be a very unassuming person, but his profession, more 
than that of the judge, as he makes his own law, is by 
itself an assumption of superiority. Willing and rea- 
soned admiration is never such a perfect tribute as the 
unconscious one, that which does not know where it be- 
gins and where it ends. I am content to say that the 


23 


eleventh Cancao seems to me as beautiful a strain of 
harmony as ever fell from a human instrument; that 
no love tears glisten purer in Poetry than the ones 
trembling forever in those verses. 


“Come here, faithful Secretary of the complaints I am always 
making, paper, on which I unload my heart. Let us tell the un- 
reasons which the inexorable fate, deaf to tears and prayers, deals 
me since I live. Let us throw a few-drops of water on so much 
fire and kindle with our outcries a torture new to all memories. 
Let us tell such wrong to God, to the world, to men, and, in fine, to 
the winds, to which so many times I have confided it in vain, as 
I am telling it now. But as I was born for endless errors, I do not 
doubt that this will be one more of them. And since I am so far from 
finding my right way, I should not be accused for erring also in this. 
At least I have this one refuge for speaking and for erring, without 
offense, freely. How sad he who is content with so little. 

“T have long desisted from seeking cure in complaining; but 
who suffers is forced to cry out, if the pain is excessive; I will shout, 
though the voice is weak and small to relieve me, and that not even 
with shouting the grief will abate. Who will grant me at least to 
pour tears and infinite sighs, equal to the sorrow that dwells within 
me? But who could ever measure grief by tears or cries? Still I will 
tell thee that which wrath, pain and their recollection teach me. 

As no other pain is by itself harder or stronger. Come you, 
who are in despair and listen to me, and let fly away those who 
live on hope, or those who imagine themselves in it, because love 
and fortune combine to leave them power to ascertain the true 
measure of the woes that may befall them. 

“When I came fresh to light from the maternal tomb, unhappy 
stars at once put me in bondage, barring from me my true will; 
I knew a thousand times in happiness the better and followed 
constrained the worse. To give me ever torments conforming 
with my years, they ordered that, when still an infant, I gently 
opened my eyes, a blind boy would wound me. The tears of childhood 
came already mingled with enamoured longings; my cries in the 
cradle sounded to me like sighs. Destiny and age were in accord, 
and when they rocked me with sad love songs, my nature at once 
was lulled.into sleep, so much akin was it to sadness. 


“My nurse was some weird creature as destiny did not wish 
that a woman had such name for me, nor was any who could. Thus 


24 


was I suckled; I drank from a child the amorous poison that I 
would drink in full age, so that it would not kill me by my being 
accustomed to it. Then I saw the image and the likeness of that 
feral human creature so beautiful, who reared me at the breasts of 
Hope, and of whom I afterwards saw the original, which makes 
of my great errors a proud and sovereign sin. It seems it had the 
human form, but it scintillated divine spirits. It had a demeanour 
and a presence that all evil felt vain glory at its sight; its shade 
and light excelled the power of Nature. 

“What a kind so new of torment had love, that was not only tried 
on me, but wholly executed! Implacable harshness had ashamed 
and shaken from its purpose the fervent wish, that gives strength 
to thought. Here were phantastic shades, brought from some daring 
hopes; with them the true blisses were also painted and feigned, 
but the pain of the contempt which I received, putting every fancy 
in confusion, disconcerted its ingenious dreams. My occupation 
was to guess and to hold as truth what was guess, and then to 
unsay myself in shame; in fine to lend a contrary sense to what I 
saw, to find reasons for everything,—while the unreasons were much 
more evident. 

“T do not know if she knew that she was stealing my own vitals 
With her rays and that they fied to her subtly through my eyes. 
Little by little, invincibly, they went from me, just as the ardent 
sun draws the subtle humours from the veil of ‘the skies. In fine 
the pure and transparent mien, compared to which this name of 
“beautiful” remains without value, the sweet and compassionate 
moving of the eyes, which held the souls in suspense, were the 
magic herbs which Heaven made me drink and which for long years 
have transformed me into another being, and I was so pleased with 
seeing myself so changed, that I deceived my pains with my dreams, 
and before my eyes I held a veil to hide from myself the growing 
harm that was increasing within me, like one who was brought up 
with caresses from him for whom he had grown. 

“Who could paint the absent life, my discontent at all I saw; 
my feeling always away from wherever I was; my speaking without 
knowing what my words meant; my going without seeing through 
where, and my sighing without knowing I was sighing, when 
that state most tormented me, and I felt the pain that came to 
the world from the waters of Tartarus, more severe than all others 
and which used to convert soft grief into fiercest rage? Then mad 
with pain, and not wishing to cease to love, I turned in another 
direction for vengeance the wish deprived of hope, and which 
hardly could be changed. Then the sweet remembrance of the 


25 


past, a torment soft, pure, and doleful, came to convert those 
furies into tears of love. 

“What excuses did I not seek with myself alone when fond love 
did not suffer me to find fault in the loved thing, and how dearly 
loved! Such were the remedies imagined by fear of torment, which 
taught my life to maintain itself through snares. In this I passed a 
part of it, and in that part, if I ever had one joy, short, imperfect, 
timid and wrong, it was only the seed of a protracted and bitterest 
torture. This continuous course of sadness, those steps vainly scat- 
tered, went on extinguishing the ardent taste of those enamoured 
thoughts which I had fixed so earnestly in my soul and with which I 
had fed my tender nature. The latter through the long habit of ad- 
versity, to which no human strength can resist, ended by turning to 
the taste of feeling sad. 

“Thus I went changing my life into another, not I, my own adverse 
fate, and even so I would not have changed that life for any other. 
It made me leave the loved paternal nest and cross the long sea, 
which so many times threatened my life. Now experiencing the rare 
fury of Mars, who wished me at once to touch in my own eyes his 
bitter fruit, and in this escutcheon of mine you will see the picture of 
the terrible fire. Now a pilgrim, wandering among the different Na- 
tions, apart in languages, costumes and qualities, only to follow thee 
Fortune, that consumest life’s ages, carrying before each of them a 
hope brilliant as a diamond, but which when it falls from thy hand 
one recognizes to be only useless glass. 

‘Human pity failed me; I sawthe friendly people hostile at my first 
danger and in the second no land could I find where I could set my 
foot; even air to breathe was denied me; I had not for me either 
time or the world. What an arduous and deep mystery is this! To 
be born to live and yet to be refused all that the world has to give 
for life. And not to find a way of losing it, it being lost so many 
times already! In fine there was no transe of fortune, nor peril, nor 
doubtful cases, (injustices from those whom the confused law, the 
ancient abuse of the world, renders powerful over other men), that 
I did not bear, attached to the faithful column of my suffering, which 
the importuning persecution of ill broke a thousand times to pieces 
by the strength of its arms. 

“T do not recall such suffering, as one who after a raging storm 
tells of its wrecks inside a quiet port, as even now wavering for- 
tune compels me to undergo so many miseries that I fear to take a 
single step more. Already I do not recoil before any coming evil, nor 
do I pretend to any good which may be failing me, as I find hu- 
man cunning of no avail against fate. I am pending from a soy- 


26 


ereign force, from Divine Providence. What I see and dream, 
sometimes. I take it as a comfort for so many wrongs. But when 
human frailty throws its eyes on current fortune and only obtains a 
memory of past years, what waters I then drink and what bread I 
eat, are sad tears, which I never can control except by building in 
the imagination phantastic pictures of joy. 

“Tf it were possible for time to turn backwards, as memory does, 
over the traces of the first age and, webbing again the old story of 
my sweet errors, it carried me amidst the flowers of the youth, 
which I once saw, and, then the remembrance of the loved past be- 
coming greater content for me, if I enjoyed again the suave and pleas- 
ant talk where stood one and other keys of my present thought, the 
fields, the walks, the signals, the sight, the snow, the rose, the beauty, 
the grace, the sweetness, the courtesy, the simple friendship that de- 
viates away all earthly and impure intention, and the one like which 
I never saw any other! Alas, vain memories! Wheretodo youtake my 
frail heart, as I cannot yet well tame this useless desire of yours! 

“No more, Cancéo, no more, as I would speak like this for a thou- 
sand years without feeling it, and if by chance they accuse thee of 
being long and heavy, answer that the water of the sea cannot hold 
in such a narrow vase. Nor do I sing those delicate points for love 
of praise; I tell pure truths really lived by me. Would God they 
were dreams!” 


I think I have read tonight enough of Camoens to 
give you the idea that he really deserves to be counted 
among the greatest lyric poets. I believe the gems of 
his poetry placed before you will last as long as the 
other literary heirlooms of mankind. Modern reading 
is so indiscriminate that the popularity of an author is 
no test of his intrinsic value. One had better not touch 
Homer, or Dante, or Camoens, if one has contracted the 
habit of reading to kill time. ‘To enjoy their company 
we need the contrary habit of reading to treasure 
up our passing hours in undying recollections. ‘To 
read the great authors of the past is a duty for all who 
are real particles of the human intelligence. If one lets 
his taste for the writings of the day absorb him, he 
overlooks that sacred duty of watching over the pre- 


27 


cious deposits of the human mind, of keeping fresh and 
retentive the memory of our race, of increasing its 
touch with the past the more it drifts away from us. A 
humanity, wholly interested in the present, losing grad- 
ually its memory, unable to enjoy what should be its 
greatest pleasure: that of living anew by recollection 
in its ages of art and poetry and legend, would be a sad 
sight, however great the material development around 
it. Any shrinking of human imagination would be 
fatal to mind and heart, however great might be the 
increase of discovery. Ido not think any such caution 
from a stranger is needed at your hearth, no more 
than one from a barbarian on the keeping of the pal- 
ladium would be needed at the house of the Roman 
Vestals. I simply explain my coming here to speak of 
Camoens and not of the passing literature of the day. 

I thought his name deserved to awake the echoes of 
this Institution, which stands so far ahead of our 
times, if the whole of mankind is considered. Immi- 
gration was the greatest human fact of the nineteenth 
century, and the social progress of woman will be 
the greatest human fact of the twentieth. Both are 
as yet principally American facts. As to the first, 
the Lustaps ean .be called the Poem of Immigration. 
As to the second, there is nothing expressed in it about 
the idea that inspired the creation of Vassar College; 
but if the means are left in the shade, the end is in full 
light in the poem, and woman, as Camoens has drawn 
her, is the noblest type that could be carved by cen- 
turies of the highest education. ‘To speak and to act 
like his Venus, his Queen Maria; to die like his Ignez de 
Castro, or his Dona Leonor de Sa, supposes and re- 
quires the erystallisation of the soul as a divine mirror, 
which certamly would be the goal of education, if all 


28 


education had not of necessity to be content with a 
limit, in order to give a higher average. 

Were love to be banished from life, from literature 
and from art, the Lustaps, like the Iurap, and the 
Opyssry, and the Brsiez, would cease to count for man- 


kind; but however supremely love might be purified by . 


Religion and moral dignity, the Lustaps would keep in- 
tact its heat and its light. You will find in its poetry 
the soul of the Renaissance purified by the breath of 
Chivalry. It is the poem of heroism as well as that of 
love; the poem of Neptune as the poem of Venus; that 
is, it represents the combined power of the two poles 
of mankind: the masculine and the feminine. 

In one single respect familiarity with the Lustaps 
might be of some danger for women: it might make 
them too conscious of their power. Already in the 
relations of Venus with Jupiter at the beginning 
the force of the womanly appeal shows itself ir- 
resistible. Throughout the poem beauty and gentle- 
ness operate miracles, which, although disguised under 
mythological garb, are really symbolic of the power of 
woman. But I think you are taught here not to abuse 
that power. 


Future alumnae of Vassar, I am glad to bring to you © 


the greetings of your fellow students of Brazil. Our 
country has a title to your sympathy: she has paid the 
highest posible compliment to woman by rejecting, 
when a Monarchy, the Salic Law, and alone, of the 
American nations, she was ruled over by a woman. 
Among the daughters of our Continent none, except 
your Mrs. Beecher Stowe, could claim precedence in 
History before the Brazilian Princess, who at- 
tached her name to our two great Acts for the Eman- 
cipation of the Slaves. We are proud of the magnifi- 


ee a ee 


29 


cent part of the earth God gave to 
our national features, but by faré@ayamatest pride is 
the Brazilian woman, and our hope’ ™ that higher 
education will enlarge her mind without touching at 
her heart. We can well have that assurance, as this 
is the greatest experience of Vassar College. 

I feel most grateful to President Taylor for the great 
opportunity he gave me of speaking to you of Camoens. 
If I were to make a votive tablet for Matthew Vassar 
in Camonian style I would:only have to alter two 
words of the stanza of the Lustaps in honor of the poet- 
king Dom Diniz, the founder of Coimbra University: 






d of many of 


“It was he who first caused the high craft of Minerva to be prac- 
tised by woman and who made the Muses desert the Helicon to tread 
the rich verdure of the Hudson. All that could be expected from 
Athens is given here by proud Apollo; here he distributes the 
wreaths of ‘baccharis and evergreen laurel twined with gold.” 

—III, 97. 


Fez primeiro em Coimbra exercitar-se 
O valeroso officio de Minerva; 
E de Helicona as Musas fez passar-se 
A pizar do Mondego a fertil herva. 
Quanto pode d’ Athenas desejar-se, 
Tudo o soberbo Apollo aqui reserva: 
Aqui as capellas da tecidas de ouro, 
Do baccharo, e do sempre verde louro. 
III, 97. 


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